08/03/20 to 14/03/20

A claimant sent in bank statements in support of a claim that I had already put into payment. There were 4 pages of statements but her wages and her private pension didn't appear as transactions & there was a credit transfer from a linked account. I rang her & went through the statements. There was only one bank statement that she had uploaded twice. The statement covered the period 2/1/20 to 20/1/20 only. Her private pension is paid on the 1st of them month & her wages are paid at the end of the month. The credit transfer was due to the closure of a savings a/c. She confirmed she had only this one account. I accepted the explanation & notebooked it.

Updated ctr entitlement for several claims following new UC award info received via ATLAS. Unfortunately we printed the annual 2020/2021 council tax bills at the weekend so these customers will be receiving an incorrect bill to begin with as their ctr entitlement has now changed. Most of the changes were increases in ctr so the replacement bill will be for a lower amount so I don't expect there to be any complaints from these customers.

Noticed one of the UC claims with a non-dep had no non-dep deduction due to the non-dep having a child aged under 5. There is no non-dep deduction on the ctr claim either. This is one way in which UC differs from the hb/ctr claim regs.

I was able to put several ctr claims received last month into payment following receipt of UC award info via electronic documents and/or ATLAS items.

Made Adverse Inference under Reg 83 (4F) on a ctr claim that we received originally via their UC claim. The UC claim was terminated shortly after & I asked if they still wanted to apply for ctr and, if so, to provide the info required. One month later we have had no reply so made Adverse Inference & sent our standard AI ltr.

Dealt with several ATLAS items for claimants reaching state pension age. They had all been ESA claimants & their ESA award has now ended & their state pension entitlement has now commenced. All of these claims now require a full review to check for private pensions, lump sums received & savings/capital amounts. I have come across too many claims in the past where we have not done an entitlement review when people have reached state pension age and therefore have not included private pension income and find out about the pension much later resulting in overpayments that been written off as LA error.